Louie's Search

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Louie's Search Pub. Date: 2/28/2001 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

$2.51

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Louie's Search Pub. Date: 9/28/1989 Publisher: Aladdin
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Hardcover

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Louie's Search Pub. Date: 2/28/2001 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)

$0.16

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Louie's Search (REISSUE) Pub. Date: 4/23/2001 Publisher: Viking

$0.56

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Louie's Search Pub. Date: 10/1/1984 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
$2.75

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Other Format

$2.75

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Louie's Search Pub. Date: 1/1/1980 Publisher: Collier Macmillan Ltd

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Overview

When Louie goes looking for a father, he meets Barney. Barney accuses Louie of stealing a music box from his truck, but Louie says he didn't do it. It's up to Louie's mother to settle the conflict and reveal that meeting Barney may be the beginning of the end of Louie's search. This heartwarming tale features the same collage art and colorful urban setting that are featured in Keats' popular books A Letter to Amy and Peter's Chair.

After moving to a busy new neighborhood with his mother, Louie decides to explore and see if there is anyone he might like to have as a father.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

" `What kind of neighborhood is this?' thought Louie. `Nobody notices a kid around here.' " Fans of Ezra Jack Keats will recognize his signature collage style in Louie's Search, in which the young hero finds a special companion in his neighborhood. First published in 1980, Keats's message still applies: love can be found in the most unusual places. ( Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Children's Literature

In Louie's Search, Ezra Jack Keats tells the story of a young boy who goes for a walk through his neighborhood searching for a father. When he picks up a music box that falls off of a truck, what he finds is trouble. The man who owns the truck mistakes Louis for a thief and chases him home. Both the text and the illustrations in the book provide the mood and humor of this story. The pictures are incredibly rich with color and animation, developing the story as it grows and changes. As the text reflects Louie's hopeful attitude at the beginning of his search, the bright colors depict the characters in humorous ways. The colors slowly darken, as the tone of the text grows more cynical, creating a shadow of darkness for the man who is angry with Louie. Each page is covered in vivid watercolors depicting the emotional journey of a lost boy until he finds his father. Although this book does have a happy ending (Louis does in fact find a father), readers could misconstrue the message as implying that all a young boy has to do to find a father is go looking for attention. Despite this overly simplistic message, the book is a fun and creative read that children at any reading level could enjoy. 2001 (orig.1980), Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,
— Kate Kirkman <%ISBN%>0140567615

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780140567618
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date: 2/28/2001
Pages: 40
Sales rank: 426,391
Age range: 3 - 8 Years
Lexile: AD90L (what's this?)
Product dimensions: 8.02 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.18 (d)

Meet the Author

Ezra Jack Keats

Admired as much for his inventive, colorful illustrations as his simple, earnest stories, Ezra Jack Keats literally changed the face of children’s literature by introducing African-American characters into a mostly white genre. His gentle, big-hearted books have been loved by generations of children of all races.

Biography

When Ezra Jack Keats began creating children's books in the 1960s, he noticed something missing from the genre and chose to correct it.

Keats had already illustrated several kids' books and was starting his second when he made a simple but important decision: The main character would be black. "None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background," Keats later wrote. "My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along."

The character, Peter, debuted in The Snowy Day, which won a Caldecott Medal. Perhaps the strongest statement Keats made about race at the time was making ethnicity (his first book's protagonist was a Puerto Rican boy) completely incidental to the story. The books' themes are universal: In the case of Snowy Day, a boy discovers the joy of angel-making, sledding, and all the other things kids do on a free winter day.

The child of immigrants, Keats grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, in relative poverty. Although his gifts with pencil and paint were obvious from a young age, his father, a waiter, discouraged his artistic ambitions, fearing it would be too hard for his son to make a living. When he brought home tubes of paint for Ezra, he would tell the boy that hard-up artist customers had swapped their paint for soup. When his father died, however, Keats discovered a stash of newspaper clippings: his father had carefully saved the notices of all of Ezra's artistic prizes and achievements.

Once established as a creator of children's books, Keats developed a stable of characters -- including the adventurous Peter, a shy boy named Louie, and a sympathetic girl named Amy -- who often resurfaced over the author's twenty-odd years of storymaking. Often taking place in urban settings and illustrated in Keats's hallmark gouache and collage style, the stories chronicle the discoveries, pleasures, and fears of being a kid: coping with a new sibling, befriending a previously scary blind neighbor, entering a pet show, or finding a pair of goggles.

Keats tackled the topic of single parenthood in Louie's Search, where Louie accidentally discovers a husband for his mom. Even when characters behave oddly or badly (as in the case of Louie's new dad, who initially accuses the boy of stealing from his junk truck), their innate goodness is always revealed. Each title exemplifies Keats's faith in people.

With his muted, evocative images and his commitment towards diversity, Keats made children's literature vivid and human in a way it had never been before.

Good To Know

In the late 1930s, Keats worked as a mural painter on WPA projects. He entered the Army in 1943, where he designed camouflage patterns.

Later, Keats created five greeting cards about peace for UNICEF's first greeting card season ... A million cards were sold that year.

The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi is the sole repository for Ezra Jack Keats's archives.

A life-size bronze statue of Peter, Willie, and Peter's chair sits in Imagination Playground in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

1. Also Known As:
  
  Jacob Ezra Katz (birth name)
1. Date of Birth:
  
  March 11, 1916
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Brooklyn, New York
1. Date of Death:
  
  May 6, 1983
2. Place of Death:
  
  New York, New York

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Louie's Search

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Overview

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Overview

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Children's Literature

Product Details

Meet the Author

Ezra Jack Keats

Biography

Good To Know

Customer Reviews

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